Mind and Tech: Analogies for better mental wellbeing

There are useful analogies we can use by comparing the mind and technology that are effective in understanding how the mind works.

The search bar

 
Imagine feeling anxious, depressed, lonely, fearful, or struggling with low self-esteem. Typing any of these words into a search bar yields millions of results about the problem, how it feels, and how many people struggle with the same feelings. Reading this can make us feel even more emotional or upset, leading to frustration and a sense of hopelessness. We might even self-diagnose with additional disorders, compounding our distress.

However, if we switch things around and search for the solutions, by typing in things we want to experience such as happy, excited, confident, strong, stable, calm, and in control, guess what? We have millions of websites and images that portray all of these things and enjoy looking at them. We feel hopeful, a little excited maybe that things can change, we may even have some ideas of things that we’d forgotten about that have made us happy in the past. There may be activity ideas, good books to read, films to watch, and songs to listen to.

Our minds too can work a little like this, if we keep focusing on the problem, it becomes bigger, and more noticeable. We are vigilant to the things that prove this is the case. Have a read-up on confirmation bias. Instead, when we start searching for solutions, our minds can work fantastically at finding new ways of doing things, perhaps trying something new, doing something we’ve always wanted to do, or things that we know already work for us well and amplifying their effects. Your mind will start to notice things that show you that you are changing and working towards your new preferred way of thinking, feeling, or doing.

Busy tabs section

Have you noticed that when we are working sometimes, or searching for things, or we have too many programmes open, etc, our device can get a little slow or sluggish? It’s as if the computer doesn’t know which bit you want to focus your attention on, so it just keeps whirring away with everything in the background and becomes overloaded.

Our minds too can be like this. Yes, we can shift our attention between multiple tasks, but doing this regularly isn’t always helpful. We may not complete anything well if our attention flicks between one thing and another. Sometimes we have to allow our minds to slow down, rest, or even daydream a little.

Some of the greatest ideas come from those lightbulb moments when we allow our minds to idle and drift and then ‘ping!’ creativity happens! Often this occurs when we are doing something that doesn’t require our full attention (I have these moments when walking the dog when I suddenly remember something or have a new idea.) People often have them in the shower, or doing the washing up gazing out of the window.

Hypnosis utilises this nice state of daydreaming or trance so that our minds are focused and at their most creative,  solving problems, thinking of new ways of doing things etc. We can almost view things in a slightly dissociated way, away from the normal thoughts, feelings and emotions that can steer us in a less helpful direction.

The critical error 

This is when our body and mind need to force us to stop. This may be thinking, doing, working, etc. It’s when we need to go into repair mode. Most of the time this is forced upon us as we don’t even realise we are overloaded.

This can manifest itself physically in the body with illness, or psychologically through things such as anxiety, anger or depression. It’s no coincidence that sometimes people get ill on their first day of annual leave when they allow things to slow down a bit. They didn’t even realise how much they needed a holiday until they took one and they came back feeling calmer, more in control, and focused.

Taking time to slow down a little and include some downtime in our daily lives means that we are less likely to reach the point of being overloaded, and needing ‘recovery’ time.

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Sometimes we can feel a little lost, that we are stuck in a rut, that we’ve lost our purpose and motivation for life, perhaps that we are not following our true path, or that we don’t feel ourselves. Taking time to reflect, to plan, to recognise what strengths and resources we already have, what we would like to include in our daily lives, what has worked for us previously and made us feel good, and a bit of positive goal setting can help us to rediscover what we are about and how we’d like our future to be. We often do this in our working lives, but not so much in our personal lives. 

The home screen

When you open your laptop and see a clutter of shortcuts and icons, it can be hard to appreciate the beautiful background picture you've set. The excess of icons obscures what you'd like to see. Many of these programmes aren't needed daily and can be accessed through the search function when required. It's similar to having a cluttered room in your house, which feels busy, disorganised, and overwhelming.

If we focus on the ones we want and need to see immediately and delete the others, we can start to see the wonderful image behind them. The image that we have chosen for ourselves that we enjoy. It may be loved ones, it may be the standard windows of beautiful beaches and landscapes that can set our imagination reeling with how it would feel to be there or visit that place. It may be your business logo that you proudly created, that reminds you of how far you’ve come in your business since your training days which gives you a sense of achievement. Again, like this screen, our mind needs a positive focus, if we are spinning too many plates, it’s hard to focus on any one thing and to recognise what is important to us.

Defragging

Information is stored on computers in blocks, that are stored in sequence from one part of your hard drive to another. Sometimes these blocks can get split, and the computer has to work harder to get the information from multiple places, which slows it down. So how does that relate to the mind? Well, during trance our minds go into a wonderful state of processing, not unlike the REM state, where your prefrontal cortex – the powerful problem-solving and creative part of the mind- lights up. Your mind can start processing things it needs to, creating new connections, and putting things into order.

If you're working on confidence or self-esteem, the mind can gather and amplify all your existing skills and resources in this area. It pulls this information together and adds new elements you'd like to develop for your future self. This creates a new, easy-to-access template of information, ready to support you as you grow.

If we keep doing the same thing, we get the same results that may not always be helpful for us. There is a quote attributed to Einstein “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

Sometimes, small, subtle positive changes can have amazing results, it doesn’t always have to be a whole lifestyle, thinking and personality change.

We are not computers, we are wonderful, unique, individual human beings, but there are some direct analogies that we can use to help us understand things a little better, almost like a user manual for the mind. It’s a powerful machine.